they have a big swath of pakistan. they're in yemen. they're in somalia. they're all the way across north africa in a growing movement that's now reaching down into the western part of africa. and so just objectively you really don't need an opinion. you just need to look at the facts, sir. al qaeda is much bigger and much more geographically dispersed than it was at 9/11. >> chad, would you agree with that? and what kind of operations are we talking about in places like algeria and eenggypt compared t what they had in afghanistan when they had the harboring government of the taliban? >> i couldn't agree more with michael. and i'd actually go a step further to say not only is he right that they have now expanded geographically and have multiple launch points for operations but if we step back and look at that map you'll see it lays over very nicely with what we're witnessing with the arab spring. we're also witnessing a dysfunctional nato operation both in afghanistan as well as in libya that leads to openings for al qaeda there. as michael points out, the